A few days ago I had to go downtown Atlanta for a few errands and decided to drive my car, a 2008 Pontiac Solstice sports coup convetible. After finishing my business, I put the top down, my sunglasses on and started up 75 north on the connector. After going about 3 miles or so, some papers in my pocket blew out and were floating around in the car. I was slowing down to park on the outside shoulder and retrieve my papers, so I put on my emergency flashers and proceeded to stop. I leaned over to pick up the papers and immediately saw the big yellow rescue truck with flashers everywhere. I had not been on the side of the interstate for more than 10 seconds and help was already behind me. These guys are good. The driver got his stuff ready, departed the truck and walked along fast moving traffic towards my car. When the driver got to my car, he ask if anything was wrong and I answered no, I was only picking up papers that blew out of my pocket. He replied that it should be illegal for a car as pretty as mine to be broke down on the roadside, we laughed and I replied that it is illegal and we chuckeled some more. This man was very nice and polite, I thanked him for a quick response, apologized for taking him from more important duties,and we parted our ways. These men and women who are HERO drivers are constantly putting their lives on the line to help those of us who have stopped for any reason on the interstates. I applaud these people and ask that you slow down a bit when passing them or any other motorists that has a break down. HERO drivers are tops in my book.
Archive for September, 2009
The HERO guy on the interstate
Monday, September 14th, 2009Squirrel problem from a year ago!
Friday, September 4th, 2009I was called to a house in Virgina Highlands today that I inspected last year. At that time the house had a grey squirrel family living in the attic, I trapped the squirrels and relocated them to a rural area. The homeowners decided not to do any repairs last year so all of the openings were still in place and readily available for any nuisance animal to re-enter at their discretion. This is a rental house and the landlord just refused to pay a repair bill. Consequently, the tennants moved out and the landlord was faced with finding new tennants and still having the same problem areas in the structure. New tennants have recently moved in, complained about noises in the attic and wanted the problem corrected as the noises were scaring a 10 year girl. Now the landlord is more receptive to correcting the problem, has to pay another elimination charge plus the repair bill. The sooner the animal situation is properly diaginosed, the easier it is to correct all of the problems with nuisance animals. Always remember, complete and thorough inspections afford the opportunity for complete and thorough repairs. Complete and thorough repairs will always be the solution to invasion by any nuisance animal. Lastly, when you hire someone to do these repairs, make sure they have a warranty to back up their work and if necessary, ask for references from recent work. I am assuming you have already seen some proof of credentials, insurance and and a business license.
Nuisance animals = more than one problem
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009Today I inspected a house which has bats in the attic. During my inspection I found rat droppings. The new attic insulation was put there 3 1/2 years ago which puts a time line on the situation for me. In the past 3 1/2 years rats have been coming and going at their leisure and the homeowners did not even know it. So, the original problem is bat removable, exclusion repairs to prevent future infesations, and soiled insulation removable and re-insulate those areas. In addition, more complete and thorough repairs are required in order to prevent rats from re-entering the structure, rodent elimination, and some more soiled insulation removable and re-insulating these areas will also be required from a health standpoint. Now you can see how one problem which goes uncorrected can ballon into some serious and major problems before it all is corrected. It is fairly common for most sturctures to have evidence of numerous animals in their attic and crawl spaces over a period of 20, 30, or 40 years. Sometimes this evidence is from an old infestation but still requires complete and thorough repairs in order to stop future infestations. Sometime this evidence is from current infestations and will require complete and thorough repairs to prevent future infestations from occurring. Anytime nuisance animals invade structures, the answer to the problem will be in exclusion repairs. One pest control company in Lawrenceville says that repairs should only be done as a last resort and that he can charge you to repeatedly put down more chemicals for rodent control and that will stop them from entering your structure. HOGWASH, if you want to keep animals out of your home, then you had better have a professional exclsuion repair specialist do complete and thorough repairs on the structure. Continuing to add more chemical to the environment is certainly not the solution to this problem but it sort of does give him job security as opposed to correcting the problem. If you are having someone do exclusionary repairs to your home, ask them to show proof of laibility insurance, Georgia DNR credentials, Georgia Dept of Ag credentials, a city or county business license and any thing else you wish in an effort to prove they are a professional company. This industry is full of theives and morons, buyer beware.